USA > Oklahoma > A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period, Vol. I > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
In 1832, about eighty Cherokee families who had become affili- ated with the Baptist Church in their old homes in the East, immi- grated to the West and were accompanied by Rev. Dunean O'Briant, who organized the work of that denomination in the new Cherokee country. They formed a settlement about seventy miles north of Fort Smith, within the limits of the present County of Delaware. A sawmill and a grist mill were erected on a stream which furnished abundant water power. A church was also built and a school was opened. Mr. O'Briant, who was a zealous mis- sionary and who possessed the confidence of all who knew him, died August 25, 1834. He was succeeded by Rev. Samuel Aldrich, who came from Cincinnati. He died within a year after his arrival. His successor, Rev. Chandler Curtiss, was obliged to abandon the mission in 1836 because of the hostility of several influential white people who lived in the vicinity. In the great Cherokee migration of 1838-39, Rev. Jesse Bushyhead, one of the most active of the Cherokees who had been ordained to the ministry of the Baptist Church, was captain of one of the earavans that was organ- ized to make the trip under the direction of the Cherokee National Couneil.
The first Baptist missionary in the Creek Nation of which there is any record was Rev. John Davis, who, as a member of the tribe. had been converted under the preaching of the missionaries in the old Creek country east of the Mississippi and who had aceompa- nied one of the earlier parties of Creek immigrants who came to the Indian Territory, arriving some time after his appointment, probably in 1831. In 1832 David Lewis was ordained in New York as a missionary to the Creeks. In co-operation with John Davis, he selected a site for a mission station which was called Ebenezer and which was located about fifteen miles west of Fort Gibson and
152
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
three miles north of the Arkansas River. A church, schoolhouse and other buildings for the use of this mission were erected during the year 1833. David B. Rollin was sent from Cincinnati, in 1834, to supersede David Lewis as missionary in charge. In September, 1835, matters were complicated by the arrival of a body of 2,300 immigrants from the old Creek country in the East, and it was reported that 8,000 more, under the leadership of Opothleyaholo, would soon start for the West. The factional jealousies between the Upper Creeks and the Lower Creeks due to the difference in opinion and desire concerning removal to the West, led to trouble. Indians who were opposed to the work of the missionaries openly charged that the latter had meddled in the affairs of the Creeks. As a result, Major Armstrong, the superintendent of Indian affairs in the Indian Territory, requested all missionaries in the Creek Nation to leave. Afterward, the charges were refuted in a session of the Creek Council, by vote of which the missionaries were exon- erated. Rev. Charles R. Kellam was sent out from Vermont, in 1836, to succeed Mr. Rollin. Several efforts were made to re-estab- lish the work among the Creeks between that time and 1840, and a number of additional mission workers were assigned to that field by the Mission Board of the Baptist Church, but the internal disturbances within the tribe were such that efforts to that end seemed almost futile.6
Rev. Charles E. Wilson, of Philadelphia, was the first Baptist missionary assigned to work among the Choctaws after their re- moval to the West. He labored in the vicinity of the Choctaw Agency, at Skullaville, where he conducted a school for a time, but his work in educational lines was seriously inconvenienced by pre- vailing sickness among the Indians. He withdrew from the work in 1835 and was succeeded by Rev. Joseph Smedley, who established
6 While the environment of the Indians in their new homes in the Indian Territory were theoretically presumed to be more favorable than it had been when they were surrounded by the demoralizing influences of a certain element of lawless white people in their old homes in the East, yet, as a matter of fact, the whiskey trader, the gambler and the renegade soon found their way to the Indian Territory. Naturally, such an element was opposed to the work of the missionaries and no opportunity to incite the suspicions and prejudices of the Indians against them. What with sickness and occasional deaths among their own numbers and the covert or open hostility of the wayward intruders of men of their own race, the lot of the missionaries in the Indian Ter- ritory was not infrequently an uncomfortable onc.
153
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
his work at Pleasant Bluff Spring, on the Canadian River, thirty miles west of Skullaville. Rev. Eben Tucker and Rev. Alanson Allen also came to work in the same region shortly afterward. Ramsey D. Potts, a Baptist layman, who had been employed in the service of one of the missions in the old Choctaw country, came with the migrating Choctaws to the Red River region, where he opened a school and gave religious instructions to the people. The location of this school, which he called Providence, was six miles north of the Red River and twelve miles west of Fort Towson. Mr. Potts was ordained to the ministry of the Baptist Church in 1837. In the same year, Miss Lucy H. Taylor joined the station at Provi- dence, where she opened a school for Choctaw girls.
The first missionary work among the Indians of the tribes which immigrated to the Indian Territory from the South by the Methodists was done by preachers who had been laboring among them in their old homes. The work of the Methodist Church among these tribes seems to have been started by some of the conferences adjoining the Indian reservations rather than at the instance of the mission board of that denomination. The efforts of the Meth- odist missionaries among the people of these tribes seem to have been very successful, hundreds of Indians affiliating with the church, including a number of leaders, among whom were John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees, and Greenwood LeFlore, principal chief of the Choctaws. In the migration, Alexander Talley and Moses Perry, two devoted missionaries, accompanied the Choctaws to the Indian Territory ; John Fletcher Boot and sev- cral others came with the Cherokees and several preachers came with the Creeks. In those days, the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church included not only all of the present State of Missouri but also the State of Arkansas and the inhabited portions of Eastern Kansas and Eastern Oklahoma as well. In 1831 Rev. John Harrell was transferred from the Tennessee Con- ference to the Missouri Conference and was assigned to the "Wash- ington and Cherokee Mission," an appointment which was the be- ginning of a ministerial career of more than forty years of service among the Indians. During the earlier years the work of the Methodist missionaries in the Indian Territory consisted largely of itinerant preaching at certain stated places and occasions rather than a concentration of effort in a particular locality. An appoint- ment, or station, therefore, meant a given district in which there might be as many as twenty or more preaching places. The Meth- odist camp meeting, as a form of evangelistic effort also appealed
154
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
strongly to the Indians who loved to gather in assemblages. The Indian Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was not organized until after the beginning of the next period but the work seems to have prospered from the beginning in spite of the demoralization due to the enforced removal to the West.
The Moravian Church, which had been one of the earliest and most persevering organizations in its efforts to evangelize the American Indians, and which had preceded all other Protestant bodies in the establishment of a mission among the Cherokees, con- tinued to do some missionary work among the people of the Cherokee Tribe after their removal to the West, though its opera- tions in this line were not organized and prosecuted on such an extensive scale as those of the other ecclesiastical bodies enumerated in the foregoing account. It is said that the first church bell ever brought to Oklahoma was one that was hung in the belfry of the church at the Moravian Mission for the Cherokees.
FOURTH PERIOD PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT
4
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CHEROKEE FEUD
The removal of the main body of the Cherokee Tribe from the old home country to the Indian Territory, and the substitution of its governmental organization for that of Western Cherokees, or "Old Settlers" as they were called, and the hostility between the Treaty and Anti-Treaty factions of the recent immigrants which re- sulted in the assassination of the Ridges and Boudinot, constituted but the beginning of the internal troubles of the Cherokee Nation. An open feud followed and a reign of terror prevailed. Governor Montfort Stokes, the tribal agent, strove to be conciliatory and to bring about a better understanding. General Arbuckle, the post commander at Fort Gibson (who had served under Jackson and on his personal staff), made no secret of the fact that his sympathies were with the members of the Treaty Party.
The Anti-Treaty, or Ross Party contended that it was the real Cherokee Nation, transported against its will from its old homeland in the East to a new reservation in the Western Wilderness; that the Western Cherokees, or "Old Settlers," who had moved from Arkan- sas to the Indian Territory in 1829, were but a mere part of the original tribe, the temporary tribal government of which should and did cease to exist when the whole tribe was reunited by the removal of the main body from the East in 1838-9. This party was also insisting that the Federal Government should reopen the ques- tion of compensation for the lands which had been relinquished in the East and allow for the same a sum equal to their real value, which was undoubtedly far in excess of the $5,000,000 which had been allowed by the treaty under which the Cherokees had been compelled to migrate.
The Treaty, or Ridge Party claimed that most of its members had migrated in advance of the main body of the tribe and largely at their own expense for which they had not been reimbursed; that they were subject to wicked persecution at the hands of the domi- nant faction (i. e., the Anti-Treaty, or Ross Party), and that the
157
158
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
tribal authorities were guilty of extravagance and corruption in the administration of affairs that were of common concern.
The Western Cherokee, or Old Settler Party asserted that the new reservation in the Indian Territory had been granted to its members alone and not to the whole tribe ; that they had been forced to divide their tribal domain with the more numerous and powerful part of the tribe without consultation or consent; that their tribal government had been supplanted by that of the new comers; that the holdings of some of their leaders had been forcibly appropriated by some of the latter, and that the tribal authorities of the dominant faction were guilty of tyranny and usurpation.
The leaders of all three parties were memorializing Congress for the redress of their grievances. Although there had been a council for the purpose of composing the differences of the three factions shortly after the arrival of the immigrants in 1839, any positive results which might have been secured were more than offset by the assassination of the leaders of the Treaty Party shortly after- ward. General Arbuckle ealled a council of the representatives of the three factions to be held at Fort Gibson, April 20, 1840, for the purpose of arriving at some agreement. This council resulted in the signing of an " Act of Union of the Cherokee People," but most of the Old Settler representatives subsequently repudiated their part in the matter, claiming that they had acted personally and without delegated authority.
John Rogers, who had been chief of the Western Cherokees at the time of the arrival of the immigrants in 1839, had held the con- cession for operating the salt works at the big saline spring near the old Chouteau Trading Post.1 Of this he was dispossessed and Lewis Ross, brother of the principal chief received the concession. Rogers left the Cherokee Nation and never afterward returned to live with- in its limits, claiming that his life was not safe. Ross asserted that the saline springs were the property of the Cherokee Nation and that they might be leased to a new party if deemed expedient. Nevertheless, Rogers was never reimbursed for his improvements on the property and he and his friends always regarded the transaction
1 John Rogers was a mixed-blood Cherokee, the son of a Tory captain who was noted as one of the most daring in the British serv- ice in the Carolinas during the American Revolution, at the close of which he settled among the Cherokees, married and reared a family. A sister of John Rogers, Tiana, was the Cherokee wife of Samuel Houston, who lived in the Cherokee country for several years before going to Texas. John Rogers died in Washington, June 12, 1846, aged about seventy years.
159
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
as a virtual confiscation. The protest of the Western Cherokecs, which was filed in the form of a memorial to Congress, signed by John Rogers, James Carey and Thomas L. Rogers, and dated at Washington, District of Columbia, March 30, 1844, was a remark- ably able state paper.2
Simultaneously with the filing of the memorial of the Old Set- tlers, J. A. Bell and Ezekiel Starr, on behalf of the Treaty Party, filed a memorial reciting certain grievances, including not only the turbulent and demoralized condition prevailing in the Cherokee Nation, but also alleging extravagance and overcharges for removal and the dissipation of tribal funds and demanding an accounting for the same.3
In the autumn of 1844, the Government appointed a commission, consisting of Col. Roger Jones (adjutant general of the United States Army), Lieut. Col. R. B. Mason (of the Dragoons) and Gov- ernor Pierce M. Butler (the Government tribal agent), to investi- gate the causes to which the unhappy conditions prevailing in the Cherokee Nation were due and to try to secure some sort of an agree- ment for the settlement of the questions at issue. This commission began its sessions at Fort Gibson, in November, 1844. John Ross, the principal chief, was absent in the East and the assistant princi- pal chief, Maj. George Lowrey was acting in his stead. The corre- spondence of Ross and Lowrey with the Government officials con- cerning the disturbed condition of affairs in the Cherokee Nation displays diplomatic skill of no mean ability. In effect, they claimed to represent the Cherokee Nation and not a mere faction; they as- serted that the disturbed conditions were due to the activity of mis- guided agitators and to persons who were in a state of open defiance of the constituted authority of the Cherokee Nation, and they expressed their entire willingness to do all that was possible to restore harmony and peace among the Cherokee people, thus mak- ing it plain that any concessions or compromises must be made by the representatives of the other parties.
At this time, and, indeed, ever since the assassination of the leaders of the Treaty Party, in June, 1839, scenes of violence were numerous in the Cherokee Nation. Assassinations and murders were so common that scarcely an issue of the Cherokee Advocate, during its first two years of publication, appeared without chroni- cling some such event. While some of these crimes were due to
2 Document No. 235, House of Representatives, 28th Congress, 1st Session.
3 House Document No. 234, 28th Congress, 1st Session.
160
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
whiskey and other causes that were all too frequent along the fron- tiers of that day, a majority were due to the spirit of bitter hatred which had been engendered by the clash of political factionalism. Some of the most active and implacable partisans of the Treaty Party, defying the authority and laws of the Cherokee Nation as administered by the dominant faction, took refuge across the boun- dary in Arkansas, from whence they conducted lawless raids across
JOHN ROSS
1 the line, burning, plundering and killing at will. These had their friends and sympathizers in many places and this did not make it any easier for the tribal authorities to apprehend or punish the guilty parties.
Threats against the life of the principal chief, John Ross, were so numerous, that he found it convenient to spend much of his time in the East, far from the Cherokee Nation and its internal troubles. When he returned home, a company of Cherokee lighthorse (i. e.,
1
161
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
mounted constabulary or militia) met him at the border and escorted him to Park Hill, where a guard was maintained as long as he remained and, on his departure, he was again escorted to the Arkansas line by the lighthorsemen. New delegations, representing each of the factions were sent to Washington each year. After the Jones-Mason-Butler commission was appointed, Acting Principal Chief George Lowrey issued a proclamation to the Cherokee people, appointing a day of fasting and prayer in behalf of the distracted nation in its hour of strife and trouble. Exasperated by the atroci- ties of some of the outlaw partisans of the other factions, some of the tribal lighthorsemen harried the kinsmen of the former and even summarily executed several. Fleeing from this persecution, large numbers of Cherokee people took refuge across the line in Arkansas. Stand Watie (a brother of Elias Boudinot, a nephew of Major Ridge and an acknowledged leader of the Treaty Party) gathered a strong party of followers and encamped at the abandoned military post of Fort Wayne, on the Spavinaw, throughout the win- ter of 1845-6.4
4 John Ross, the leader of the Anti-Treaty Party, was born October 3, 1793, near Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. His father, Daniel Ross, was a Scotchman and his mother was a mixed Cherokee. He was educated at Kingston, Tennessee. His public career began when he was but nineteen years old. At that time the tribal agent sent him on a mission to the Western Cherokees, who had moved to the wilderness of Arkansas. During the War of 1812, he served as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment in the army of General Andrew Jackson in his campaign against the hostile Creek Indians. In 1817 he became a member of the national committee or council of the Cherokee people. A year later he became president of that body, in which capacity he continued to serve until 1826. He was presi- dent of the convention which framed the constitution of the Che- rokee Nation. In 1827 he was associate chief of the Cherokee Nation, William Hicks being principal chief at the time. In 1828 he became principal chief of the Eastern Cherokees, serving as suclı until their removal to the West in 1838, when he became chief of the united tribe. He continued to fill that position until his death, which occurred at Washington, D. C., August 1, 1866. It has been said that his long administration of nearly forty years as principal chief was imperial and autocratic rather than republican and repre- sentative, though perhaps not altogether unsuited to the times and conditions. His first wife, Elizabeth, to whom he was married in 1813, was a full-blood Cherokee. She died in 1839, at Little Rock, Arkansas, while the tribe was on the way to the new reservation in the West. In 1845 he was married to Miss Stapler, a Quakeress, of Wilmington, Delaware, who was many years his junior. She died in 1865. Ross had four sons and one daughter. Vol. 1-11
162
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
Matters seemed to be going from bad to worse. In April, 1846, President Polk sent a special message to Congress, discussing condi- tions in the Cherokee Nation (apparently from the Arbuckle view- point) and suggesting that the Cherokee Nation and reservation be divided. It is not believed that lie was intentionally unjust in this matter, as he had been advised of the feasibility of such an expedient by James McKissick, who had succeeded Governor Pierce M. Butler as tribal agent. The Cherokee Advocate of May 28, 1846, contained an appeal to the Christian people of the United States for prayers in behalf of the Cherokee Nation in its distracted and demoralized condition and for their moral support in the efforts that were being put forth for the settlement of its troubles. This appeal was signed by Acting Principal Chief George Lowrey.
Finally, in the summer of 1846, the delegations representing each of the three parties were brought together in council at Washington, where, after due deliberation and consultation with the three mem- bers of the Government commission, a new treaty was drawn up and signed.5 By its terms the lands occupied by the Cherokee Nation were secured to the whole Cherokee people for their common use and benefit, and a patent issued to include the 800,000 acres after- ward known as the Cherokee Neutral Lands and also for the West- ern Outlet.6 All of the difficulties theretofore existing were de-
5 The Government commissioners in the treaty council at Wash- ington, in 1846, were Edmund Burke (a former member of Con- gress and at that time commissioner of pensions), Maj. William Armstrong (superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Indians of the five civilized tribes), and Albion K. Parris (a former United States senator and at that time comptroller of the treasury). John Ross (principal chief), David Vann, William S. Coody, Richard Taylor, T. H. Walker, Clement V. McNair, Stephen Foreman, John Drew and Richard Field were the "delegates duly appointed by the regu- larly constituted authorities of the Cherokee Nation,"-which is to say that they represented the dominant (Ross or Anti-Treaty) faction. George W. Adair, John A. Bell, Stand Watie, Joseph M. Lynch, John Huss and Brice Martin were the members of the dele- gation representing the Ridge, or Treaty Party. The Old Settler delegates were John Brown, Captain Dutch, John L. McCoy, Rich- ard Drew and Ellis Phillips.
6 The boundaries of the Cherokee Outlet (in more recent times popularly known as the "Cherokee Strip") were surveyed in 1837 by John C. McCoy, son of Rev. Isaac McCoy. The latter, who was noted as a missionary among the Indians, had the contract for the work of surveying the Outlet. Senate Document No. 120, 25th Con- gress, 2d Session, pp. 950-82 contains the report of Isaac McCoy and of Surveyor John C. McCoy, with map and field notes of the Chero- kee Outlet.
163
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
clared to be adjusted and, as far as possible, "forgotten and forever buried in oblivion." All past offenses were made subject to a gen- eral amnesty. Provision was also made for the adjudication of cer- tain claims, especially those of members of the Treaty Party and of the Western Cherokee, or Old Settler Party. A number of other matters which had long been held in abeyance were also included in the stipulations.
In theory, at least, this put an end to the troubles of the Chero- kees and the council ended in apparent harmony, Stand Watie even shaking hands with John Ross, as lie said, "for the sake of his people." If there were further troubles among them, it certainly was not made a matter of continuous appeal to the Government. So, also, the leaders of the different parties became more passive in their spirit of opposition to one another. But among the less en- lightened people the spirit of hatred which had been fanned into flames by repeated atrocities and excesses, first by the partisans of one side and then by those of the other, was not to be so easily lulled. So there were acts of violence, due in many instances to the old political feud from time to time, even down to the outbreak of the Civil war, in which the line of cleavage was destined to be par- allel if not identical with that of the feud which grew out of the dif- ference of opinion concerning the removal treaty.
CHAPTER XXV
INDIAN TRADE AND TRADERS
Trade among the Indians of the civilized tribes did not differ greatly from that of the rural merchant of that period in other parts of the country. Trading establishments and stores were to be found on the reservations of each of these tribes. The old time trad- ing posts, such as those of the Chouteaus, therefore disappeared from the more thickly settled eastern portions of the Indian Terri- tory. The principal trading centers were either near a steamboat landing or a tribal agency or both. Among the most important of these might be mentioned the following: Fort Gibson, Doaksville, Skullaville, Webbers Falls, Boggy Depot and the Creek Agency. Some of the mercantile establishments at these places were quite extensive and carried large and well selected stocks of goods.
Trade with the wild tribes of the Plains still continued to be carried on in much the same manner that it had by the earlier traders in the eastern part of the state, namely (1) by means of trading posts that were capable of being used defensively if necd be, and (2) by the venturesome independent trader who, with a small stock of goods, carried either in wagons or on pack animals, went directly into the buffalo ranges and traded with the Indians of the Plains tribes on their own hunting grounds. It is not improb- able that there were several such trading establishments in the west- ern half of the state of which even the names have been forgotten. The names of others are recorded but little or nothing is now known of their location.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.